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No.  14.  Serial.  Price,  10  Cents. 


THE 

PULPIT  AND  ROSTRUM. 

gtxmvw,  0wrttotw,  iapter  ^tttoxm,  &t.t 

PHONOGRAPHICALLY  REPORTED  BY  ANDREW  J.  GRAHAM  AND  CHARLES  B.  COLLAR. 


Success  of  our  Republic; 


A.N"    OEATION 


Hon.    EDWARD  .EVERETT, 


DELIVERED    IN   BOSTON,    MASS.,  JULY   4,    1860. 


^0FW% 


£ 


NEW  YORKX 
H.   H.   LLOYD   &   CO.,    25    HOWARD    ST. 

London  :  Trubncr  &  Co. ,  CO  Paternoster  Row. 
July  20th,  1860. 


THE    PULP^^-lTO  jBO'STRU 


AN  ELEGANT  SERIAL  IN  PAMPHLET  FORM, 
CONTAINS    PHONOGRAPHIC    REPORTS    OF    THE    BEST 

SERMONS,  LECTURES,  ORATIONS, 

ANDREW  J.  GRAHA3I  and  CHARLES  B.  COLLAR,  Reporters. 
Twelve  Numbers,  $1.00,  in  advance;  Single  Number,  10  ceo 


i 


The  special  object  in  the  publication  of  this  Serial,  is  to  preserve  in  convenient  form  th 
thoughts  of  our  most  gifted  men.  just  as  they  come  from  their  lips  ;  thus  retaining  their  freshnc 
personality.  Great  favor  has  already  been  shown  the  work,  and  its  continuance  is  certain 
successive  numbers  will  be  issued  as  often  as  Discourses  worthy  a  place  in  the  Serial  can  be  I 
out  of  the  many  reported,  we  hope  to  elect  twelve  each  year. 


TWELVE    NUMBERS    ARE     READY. 

No.  1.— The  Rev.  T.  L.  Cutler's  Sermon  on  CHRISTIAN  RECREATION 
UNCHRISTIAN  AMUSEMENT. 

No.  2. — The  celebrated  Addresses  of  the  Rev.  Henry  Ward  Beecher  and  . 
T.  Brady,  Esq.,  on  MENTAL  CULTURE  FOR  WOMEN. 

No.  3.— The  eloquent  Discourse  of  Prof.  0.  M.  Mitchell,  of  the  Cincinnati  ( 
vatory,  on  the  GREAT  UNFINISHED  PROBLEMS  OF  THE  UNIVERSE. 

No.  4.— THE  PROGRESS  AND  DEMANDS  OF  CHRISTIANITY.  By  the 
Wm.  H.  Milburn  (the  blind  preacher).     With  an  interesting  Biographical  Sket 

No.  5. — The  great  Sermon  of  Rev.  A.  Kingman  Nott  (recently  deceased 
JESUS  AND  THE  RESURRECTION,  delivered  in  the  Academy  of  Music. 
York,  February  13,  1859. 

No.  6.— THE  TRIBUTE  TO  HUMBOLDT.  Addresses  on  the  career  of  the 
Cosmopolitan,  by  Hon.  Geo.  Bancroft,  Rev.  Dr.  Thompson,  Profs.  Agassiz,  Li 
Bache  and  Guyot. 

No.  7.— COMING  TO  CHRIST.  By  Rev.  Henry  Martin  Scudder,  M.D., 
Missionary  to  India. 

No.  8.— EDWARD  EVERETT'S  ORATION  at  the  Inauguration  of  the  Sta 
Daniel  Webster,  at  Boston,  Sept.  17,  1859. 

No.  9.— A  CHEERFUL  TEMPER;  a  Thanksgiving  Discourse  by  Rev.  Wm.  A 
of  Madison  Square  Church,  N.  Y. 

No.  10.— Edward  Everett's  Address,  and  Rev.  John  A.  Todd's  Sermon  o 
Death  of  WASHINGTON  IRVING. 

No.  11.— Hon.  THOMAS  S.  BOCOCK'S  ORATION,  Address  of  Clark  Mills, 
Artist,  and  Prayer  of  Rev.  B.  H.  Nadal,  D.D.,  on  the  occasion  of  the  inaugu: 
of  the  Mills  Statue  of  Washington,  in  the  City  of  Washington,  February  22,  b 

No.  12.— TRAVEL,  ITS  PLEASURES,  ADVANTAGES  AND  REQUIREM1 
A  Lecture  by  J.  H.  Siddons,  the  distinguished  English  Lecturer.  Delivered  at 
ton  Hall,  New  York,  February,  1860. 

No.  13.— ITALIAN  INDEPENDENCE;  Addresses  by  Rev.  Henry  Ward  Bei 
Rev.  Henry  W.  Bellows,  D.D.,  Rev.  Jos.  P.  Thompson,  D.D.,  and  Prof.  ( 
Mitchell.     Delivered  in  New  York,  Feb.  17,  1860. 

Back  or  current  numbers  are  promptly  mailed  from  the  office,  on  receipt  of  the 

We  have  RUFUS  CHOATE'S  celebrated  Dartmouth  College  Oration  on  1 
Webster,  a  large  elegant  pamphlet.     Price,  postpaid,  30  cents. 

Also,  THE  WONDER  OF  MAN'S  CONSTITUTION,  a  very  valuable  Serin. 
Rev.  Sam'l  T.  Spear,  D.D.,  before  the  Brooklyn  Young  Men's  Christian  Associ 
Feb.,  1859.     Price,  12  cents,  postpaid. 


H.  H.  LLOYD  &  CO.,  Publishers, 

25  HOWARD  ST.,  NEW  TO 


3-713 


SUCCESS  OF  OUR  REPUBLIC. 


Oration  delivered  by  Him.  Edward  Everett,  at  Boston,  July  4,  1860. 

Eighty-four  years  ago  this  day,  the  Anglo-American  Colonies, 
acting  by  their  delegates  to  the  Congress  at  Philadelphia,  formally 
renounced  their  allegiance  to  the  British  Crown,  and  declared  their 
Independence.  We  are  assembled,  Fellow- Citizens,  to  commemo- 
rate the  Anniversary  of  that  great  day,  and  the  utterance  of  that 
momentous  declaration.  The  hand  that  penned  its  mighty  sentences, 
and  the  tongue  which,  with  an  eloquence  that  swept  all  before  it, 
sustained  it  on  the  floor  of  the  Congress,  ceased  from  among  the 
living  at  the  end  of  half  a  century,  on  the  same  day,  almost  at  the 
same  hour,  thirty-four  years  ago.  The  last  survivor  of  the  signers 
closed  his  venerable  career  six  years  later ;  and  of  the  generation 
sufficiently  advanced  in  life  to  take  part  in  public  affairs  on  the  4th 
of  July,  1770,  not  one  probably  survives  to  hail  this  eighty-fourth 
anniversary.  They  are  gone,  but  their  work  remains.  It  has 
grown  in  interest  with  the  lapse  of  years,  beginning  already  to  add 
to  its  intrinsic  importance  those  titles  to  respect  which  time  confers 
on  great  events  and  memorable  eras,  as  it  hangs  its  ivy  and  plants 
its  mosses  on  the  solid  structures  of  the  past,  and  we  have  come  to- 
gether to  bear  our  testimony  to  the  Day,  the  Deed,  and  the  Men.  "We 
have  shut  up  our  offices,  our  warehouses,  our  workshops,  we  have 
escaped  from  the  cares  of  business,  may  I  not  add  from  the  dis- 
sensions of  party,  from  all  that  occupies  and  all  that  divides  us,  to 


ivi23(; 


2  SUCCESS  OF  OUR  REPUBLIC. 

celebrate,  to  join  in  celebrating,  the  Birthday  of  the  Nation  with 
one  heart  and  with  one  voice.  We  have  come  for  this  year  1860 
to  do  our  part  in  fulfilling  the  remarkable  prediction  of  that  noble 
son  of  Massachusetts,  John  Adams — who,  in  the  language  of  Mr. 
Jefferson,  was  "  the  Colossus  of  Independence,  the  pillar  of  its  sup- 
port on  the  floor  of  Congress." 

Although  the  Declaration  was  not  adopted  by  Congress  till  the 
4th  of  July  (which  has  accordingly  become  the  day  of  the  An- 
niversary), the  resolution  on  which  it  was  founded  passed  on  the 
2d  inst.  On  the  following  day  accordingly,  John  Adams,  in  a 
letter  to  his  wife,  says  :  "  Yesterday  the  greatest  question  was  de- 
cided that  was  ever  debated  in  America,  and  greater  perhaps  never 
was  nor  will  be  decided  among  men.  A  resolution  was  passed 
without  one  dissenting  colony,  that  these  United  States  are  and  of 
right  ought  to  be  free  and  independent  States."  Unable  to  restrain 
the  fullness  of  his  emotions,  in  another  letter  to  his  wife,  but  of 
the  same  date,  naturally  assuming  that  the  day  on  which  the  res- 
olution was  passed  would  be  the  day  hereafter  commemorated,  he 
burst  out  in  this  all  but  inspired  strain  : 

"  The  day  is  passed ;  the  2d  of  July,  1776,  will  be  the  most  mem- 
orable epoch  in  the  History  of  America.  I  am  apt  to  believe 
that  it  will  be  celebrated  by  succeeding  generations  as  the  great 
Anniversary  Festival.  It  ought  to  be  commemorated  as  the  day 
of  deliverance  by  solemn  acts  of  devotion  to  God  Almighty.  It 
ought  to  be  solemnized  with  pomp  and  parade,  with  shows,  games, 
sports,  guns,  bells,  bonfires,  and  illuminations,  from  one  end  of  this 
continent  to  the  other,  from  this  time  forward  for  evermore  ! 

"  You  will  think  me  transported  with  enthusiasm,  but  I  am  not. 
I  am  well  aware  of  the  toil  and  blood  and  treasure  that  it  will  cost 
to  maintain  this  Declaration  and  support  and  defend  these  States. 
Yet  through  all  the  gloom,  I  can  see  the  rays  of  ravishing  light 
and  glory.  I  can  see  that  the  end  is  more  than  worth  all  the 
means  ;  that  posterity  will  triumph  in  that  day's  transaction,  even 
although  we  should  rue  it — which  I  trust  in  God  we  shall  not." 


SUCCESS  OF  OUE  KEPUBLIC.  3 

The  time  which  has  elapsed  since  the  great  event  took  place  is 
so  considerable — the  national  experience  which  has  since  accrued 
is  so  varied  and  significant — the  changes  in  our  condition  at  home 
and  our  relations  abroad  are  so  vast,  as  to  make  it  a  natural  and 
highly  appropriate  subject  of  inquiry,  on  the  recurrence  of  the  Ad- 
niversary,  how  far  the  hopeful  auguries,  with  which  our  Independ- 
ence was  declared,  have  been  fulfilled.  Has  "  the  gloom,"  which, 
in  the  language  of  Adams,  shrouded  the  4th  of  July,  1776,  given 
way  on  this  4th  of  July,  I860,  "to  those  rays  of  light  and  glory" 
which  he  predicted?  Has  "the  end,"  as  he  fondly  believed  it 
would  do,  proved  thus  to  be  far  more  than  "  worth  all  the  means?" 
Most  signally,  as  far  as  he  individually  was  concerned.  He  lived 
himself  to  enjoy  more  than  a  Koman  triumph,  in  the  result  of  that 
day's  transaction ;  to  sign  with  his  brother  envoys  the  treaty  of 
peace,  by  which  Great  Britain  acknowledged  the  independence  of 
her  ancient  Colonies  ;  to  stand  before  the  British  throne,  the  first 
representative  of  the  newly-constituted  Republic  ;  and  after  having 
filled  its  second  office  in  connection  with  him,  who,  whether  in 
peace  or  in  war,  could  never  fill  any  place  but  the  first — in  office  as 
in  the  hearts  of  his  countrymen — he  lived  to  succeed  to  the  great 
Chief,  and  closed  his  honored  career,  as  the  elective  Chief  Magistrate 
of  those  United  States,  whose  independence  he  had  done  so  much 
to  establish,  with  the  rare  additional  felicity  at  the  last  of  seeing 
his  son  elevated  to  the  same  station. 

But  the  life  of  an  individual  is  but  a  span  in  the  life  of  a  Nation  ; 
the  fortunes  of  individuals,  for  good  or  for  evil,  are  but  as  dust  in 
the  balance,  compared  with  the  growth  and  prosperity,  or  the  de- 
cline and  fall,  of  that  greatest  of  human  personalities,  a  Common- 
wealth. It  is,  therefore,  a  more  momentous  inquiry,  whether  the 
great  design  of  Providence,  with  reference  to  our  beloved  country, 
of  which  we  trace  the  indications  in  the  recent  discovery  of  the 
continent,  the  manner  of  its  settlement  by  the  civilized  nations  of 
the  earth,  the  colonial  struggles,  the  establishment  of  Independence, 
the  formation  of  a  Constitution  of  Republican  Government,  and 


4  SUCCESS  OF  OUE  EEPUBLIC. 

its  administration  in  peace  and  war  for  seventy  years — I  say,  it  is 
a  far  more  important  inquiry  whether  this  great  design  of  Prov- 
idence is  in  a  course  of  steady  and  progressive  fulfillment— marked 
only  by  the  fluctuations,  ever  visible  in  the  march  of  human  affairs, 
and  authorizing  a  well-grounded  hope  of  further  development,  in 
harmony  with  these  auspicious  beginnings — or  whether  there  is 
reason,  on  the  other  hand,  to  fear  that  our  short-lived  prosperity  is 
already  (as  misgivings  at  home  and  disparagement  abroad  have 
sometimes  whispered)  on  the  wane — that  we  have  reached,  that 
we  have  passed  the  meridian — and  have  now  to  look  forward  to  an 
evening  of  degeneracy,  and  the  closing  in  of  a  ray  less  and  hopeless 
night  of  political  decline. 

You  are  justly  shocked,  fellow-citizens,  at  the  bare  statement 
of  the  ill-omened  alternative;  and  yet  the  inquiry  seems  forced 
upon  us,  by  opinions  that  have  recently  been  advanced  in  high 
places  abroad.  In  a  debate  in  the  House  of  Lords,  on  the  19th  of 
April,  on  a  question  relative  to  the  extension  of  the  elective  fran- 
chise in  England — the  principle  which  certainly  lies  at  the  basis  of 
popular  government — the  example  of  the  United  States,  instead  of 
being  held  up  for  imitation  in  this  respect,  as  has  generally  been  the 
case,  with  reference  to  popular  reforms,  was  referred  to  as  showing, 
not  the  advantage,  but  the  evils  of  an  enlarged  suffrage.  It  was 
emphatically  asserted,  or  plainly  intimated,  by  the  person  who  took 
the  lead  in  the  debate  (Earl  Grey),  whose  family  traditions  might 
be  expected  to  be  strongly  on  the  side  of  popular  right,  that  in  the 
United  States,  since  the  Eevolutionary  period,  and  by  the  undue 
extension  of  the  right  of  suffrage,  our  elections  have  become  a 
mockery,  our  legislatures  venal,  our  courts  tainted  with  party 
spirit,  our  laws  "  cobwebs,"  which  the  rich  and  poor  alike  break 
through,  and  the  country,  and  the  Government  in  all  its  branches^ 
given  over  to  corruption,  violence,  and  a  general  disregard  of  publio 
morality. 

If  these  opinions  are  well  founded,  then  certainly  we  labor  under 
a  great  delusion  in  celebrating  the  National  Anniversary.     Instead 


SUCCESS  OF   OUR  REPUBLIC.  5 

of  joyous  chimes  and  merry  peals,  responding  to  the  triumphant 
salvos  which  ushered  in  the  day,  the  4th  of  July  ought  rather  to 
be  commemorated  by  funeral  bells,  and  minute  guns,  and  dead 
marches;  and  we,  instead  of  assembling  in  this  festal  hall  to 
congratulate  each  other  on  its  happy  return,  should  have  been 
better  found  in  sackcloth  and  ashes,  in  the  house  of  penitence  and 
prayer. 

I  believe  I  shall  not  wander  from  the  line  of  remark  appropriate 
to  the  occasion,  if  I  invite  you  to  join  me  in  a  hasty  inquiry, 
'whether  these  charges  and  intimations  are  well  founded ;  whether 
we  have  thus  degenerated  from  the  standard  of  the  Revolutionary 
age ;  whether  the  salutary  checks  of  our  system  have  been  swept 
away,  and  our  experiment  of  elective  self-government  has  con- 
sequently become  a  failure ;  whether,  in  a  word,  the  great  design 
of  Providence  in  the  discovery,  settlement,  political  independence, 
and  national  growth  of  the  United  States  has  been  prematurely  ar- 
rested by  our  perversity  ;  or  whether,  on  the  contrary,  that  design 
is  not — with  those  vicissitudes,  and  drawbacks,  and  human  infirm- 
ities of  character,  and  uncertainties  of  fortune,  which  beset  alike 
the  individual  man  and  the  societies  of  men,  in  the  Old  World  and 
the  New — in  a  train  of  satisfactory,  hopeful,  nay,  triumphant  and 
glorious  fulfillment. 

And  in  the  first  place  I  will  say  that,  in  my  judgment,  great  del- 
icacy ought  to  be  observed,  and  much  caution  practiced  in  these 
disparaging  commentaries  on  the  constitution,  laws,  and  adminis- 
tration of  friendly  States ;  and  especially  on  the  part  of  British  and 
American  statesmen  in  their  comments  on  the  systems  of  their 
two  countries,  between  which  there  is  a  more  intimate  connection 
of  national  sympathy  than  between  any  other  two  nations.  I 
must  say  that,  as  a  matter  of  taste  and  expediency,  these  specific 
arraignments  of  a  foreign  friendly  country  had  better  be  left  to  the 
public  Press.  Without  wishing  to  put  any  limit  to  free  discussion, 
or  to  proscribe  any  expression  of  the  patriotic  complacency  with 
which  the  citizens  of  one  country  are  apt  to  assert  the  superiority 


(5  SUCCESS   OF   OUR   REPUBLIC. 

of  their  own  systems  over  those  of  all  others,  it  appears  to  me  that 
pungent  criticisms  on  the  constitutions  and  laws  of  foreign  States, 
supported  by  direct  personal  allusions  to  those  called  to  administer 
them,  are  nearly  as  much  out  of  place  on  the  part  of  the  legislative 
as  of  the  executive  branch  of  a  government.  On  the  part  of  the 
latter  they  would  be  resented  as  an  intolerable  insult;  they  can 
not  be  deemed  less  than  offensive  on  the  part  of  the  former. 

If  there  were  no  other  objection  to  this  practice,  it  would  be 
sufficient  that  its  direct  tendency  is  to  recrimination ;  a  warfare  of 
reciprocal  disparagement  on  the  part  of  conspicuous  members  of 
the  legislatures  of  friendly  States.  It  is  plain  that  a  parliamentary 
warfare  of  this  kind  must  greatly  increase  the  difficulty  of  carrying 
on  the  diplomatic  discussions  which  necessarily  occur  between 
States  whose  commercial  and  territorial  interests  touch  and  clash 
at  so  many  points ;  and  the  war  of  words  is  but  too  well  adapted 
to  prepare  the  public  mind  for  more  deplorable  struggles. 

Let  me  further  also  remark,  that  the  suggestion  which  I  propose 
to  combat,  viz.,  that  the  experiment  of  self-government  on  the 
basis  of  an  extensive  electoral  franchise  is  substantially  a  failure  in 
the  United  States,  and  that  the  country  has  entered  upon  a  course 
of  rapid  degeneracy  since  the  days  of  Washington,  is  not  only  one 
of  great  antecedent  improbability,  but  it  is  one  which  it  might  be 
expected  our  brethren  in  England  would  be  slow  to  admit.  The 
mass  of  the  population  was  originally  of  British  origin,  and  the  ad- 
ditional elements  of  which  it  is*  made  up  are  from  the  other  most 
intelligent  and  improvable  races  of  Europe.  The  settlers  of  this 
continent  have  been  providentially  conducted  to  it,  or  have  grown 
up  upon  it,  within  a  comparatively  recent  and  highly  enlightened 
period,  viz.,  the  last  two  hundred  and  fifty  years.  Much  of  it  they 
found  lying  in  a  state  of  nature,  with  no  time-honored  abuses 
to  eradicate,  abounding  in  most  of  the  physical  conditions  of  pros- 
perous existence,  with  no  drawbacks  but  those  necessarily  incident 
to  new  countries,  or  inseparable  from  human  imperfection.  Even 
the  hardships  they  encountered,  severe  as  they  were,  were  well 


SUCCESS  OF  OUR  REPUBLIC.  7 

calculated  to  promote  the  growth  of  the  manly  virtues.  In  this 
great  and  promising  field  of  social  progress  they  have  planted,  in 
the  main,  those  political  institutions  which  have  approved  them- 
selves in  the  experience  of  modern  Europe,  and  especially  of  Eng- 
land, as  most  favorable  to  the  prosperity  of  a  State  ;  free  represen- 
tative governments ;  written  constitutions  and  laws,  greatly  model- 
ed upon  hers,  especially  the  trial  by  jury ;  a  free  and  a  cheap,  and 
consequently  all-pervading  Press  ;  responsibility  of  the  ruler  to  the 
people ;  liberal  provision  for  popular  education,  and  very  general 
voluntary  and  bountiful  expenditure  for  the  support  of  religion. 
If,  under  these  circumstances,  the  people  of  America,  springing 
from  such  a  stock,  and  trained  in  such  a  school,  have  failed  to  work 
out  a  satisfactory  and  a  hopeful  result;  and  especially  if  within 
the  last  sixty  years  (for  that  is  the  distinct  allegation),  and  conse- 
quently since,  from  the  increase  of  numbers,  wealth,  and  national 
power,  all  the  social  forces  of  the  country  have,  for  good  or  evil, 
been  in  higher  action  than  ever  before,  there  has  been  such  mark- 
ed degeneracy  that  we  are  now  fit  to  be  held  up,  not  as  a  model  to 
be  imitated,  but  as  an  example  to  be  shunned — not  for  the  credit, 
but  for  the  discredit  of  popular  institutions — then,  indeed,  the  case 
must  be  admitted  to  be  a  strange  phenomenon  in  human  affairs — 
disgraceful,  it  is  true,  in  the  highest  degree  to  us,  but  not  reflect- 
ing credit  on  the  race  from  which  we  are  descended,  nor  holding 
out  encouragement  anywhere  for  the  adoption  of  liberal  principles 
of  government.  If  there  is  any  feeling  in  England  that  can  wel- 
come the  thought  that  Americans  have  degenerated,  the  further 
reflection  that  it  is  the  sons  of  Englishmen  who  have  degenerated, 
must  chasten  the  sentiment.  If  there  is  any  country,  or  any 
place,  where  this  supposed  state  of  things  can  be  readily  believed 
to  exist,  surely  it  can  not  be  the  parent  country  ;  it  can  not  be  in 
that  House  of  Commons,  where  Burke  uttered  those  golden  words, 
"  My  hold  of  the  colonies  is  in  the  close  affection  which  grows 
from  common  names,  from  kindred  blood,  from  similar  privileges, 
and  equal  protection."     It  can  not  be  in  that  House  of  Peers,  where 


8  SUCCESS  OF  OUR  REPUBLIC. 

Chatham,  conscious  that  the  colonies  were  fighting  the  battle  not 
only  of  American  but  of  English  liberty,  exclaimed,  "  I  rejoice  that 
America  has  resisted."  It  must  be  in  Venice,  it  must  be  in  Naples, 
or  wherever  else  on  the  face  of  the  earth  liberal  principles  are 
scoffed  at  and  constitutional  freedom  is  known  to  exist  only  as 
her  crushed  and  mangled  form  is  seen  to  twitch  and  quiver  under 
the  dark  pall  of  arbitrary  power. 

Before  admitting  the  truth  of  such  a  supposition,  in  itself  so 
paradoxical,  in  its  moral  aspects  so  mournful,  in  its  natural  in- 
fluence on  the  progress  of  liberal  ideas  so  discouraging,  let  us,  for  a 
few  moments,  look  at  facts. 

The  first  object  in  the  order  of  events,  after  the  discovery  of 
America,  was,  of  course,  its  settlement  by  civilized  man.  It  was 
not  an  easy  task ;  a  mighty  ocean  separated  the  continent  from 
the  elder  world — a  savage  wilderness  covereel  most  of  the  country 
— its  barbarous  and  warlike  inhabitants  resisted  from  the  first  all 
coalescence  with  the  new-comers.  To  subdue  this  waste — to  plant 
corn-fields  in  the  primeval  forest,  to  transfer  the  civilization  of 
Europe  to  the  New  World,  and  to  make  safe  and  sufficient  arrange- 
ments, under  political  institutions,  for  the  growth  of  free  principles 
— was  the  great  problem  to  be  solved.  It  was  no  holiday  pastime  ; 
no  gainful  speculation  ;  no  romantic  adventure  ;  but  grim,  persist- 
ent, w^eary  toil  and  danger.  That  it  has  been  upon  the  whole  per- 
formed with  wonderful  success,  who  will  deny  ?  Where  else  in 
the  history  of  the  world  have  such  results  been  brought  about  in 
so  short  a  time  ?  And  if  I  desired,  as  I  do  not,  to  give  this  discus- 
sion the  character  of  recrimination,  might  I  not,  dividing  the 
period  which  has  elapsed  since  the  commencement  of  the  European 
settlements  in  America  into  two  portions,  viz. :  the  one  which  pre- 
ceded and  the  one  which  has  followed  the  Declaration  of  Indepen- 
dence ;  the  former  under  the  sway  of  European  Governments — 
England,  Holland,  France,  Spain — the  latter  under  the  Government 
of  the  independent  United  States — might  I  not  claim  for  the  latter, 
under  all  the  disadvantages  of  a  new  Government  and  limited  re- 
sources, the  credit  of  greatly  superior  energy  and  practical  wisdom, 
in  carrying  on  this  magnificent  work?  It  was  the  inherent  vice 
of  the  colonial  system,  that  the  growth  of  the  American  Colonies 
was  greatly  retarded  for  a  century,  in  consequence  of  their  being 
involved  in  all  the  wars  of  Europe.  There  never  was  a  period 
since  Columbus  sailed  from  Palos,  in  which  the  settlement  of  the 


SUCCESS  OF  OUR  REPUBLIC.  9 

country  has  advanced  with  sucli  rapidity  as  within  the  last  sixty 
years.  The  commencement  of  the  Revolution  found  us  with  a 
population  not  greatly  exceeding  two  millions  ;  the  census  of  1800 
little  exceeded  five  millions ;  that  of  the  present  year  will  not 
probably  foil  short  of  thirty-two  millions.  The  two  centuries  and 
a  half  which  preceded  the  Revolution  witnessed  the  organization 
of  thirteen  colonies,  to  which  the  period  that  has  since  elapsed  has 
added  tAvcnty  States.  1  own  it  has  filled  me  with  amazement  to 
find  cities  like  Cincinnati  and  Louisville,  Detroit,  Chicago,  and  St. 
Louis,  not  to  mention  those  still  more  remote,  on  spots  which  with- 
in the  memory  of  man  were  frontier  military  posts,  to  find  rail- 
roads and  electric  telegraphs  traversing  forests,  in  whose  gloomy 
shades,  as  late  as  1789,  the  wild  savage  still  burned  his  captive  at 
the  stake. 

The  desponding  or  the  unfriendly  censor  will  remind  me  of  the 
blemishes  of  this  tumultuous  civilization :  outbreaks  of  frontier 
violence  in  earlier  and  later  times  ;  acts  of  injustice  to  the  native 
tribes  (though  the  policy  of  the  Government  toward  them  has  in 
the  main  been  paternal,  and  conscientiously  administered) ;  the 
roughness  of  manners  in  infant  settlements ;  the  collisions  of  ad- 
venturers not  yet  compacted  into  a  stable  society — deeds  of  wild 
justice  and  wilder  injustice — border  license,  lynch  law.  All  these 
I  admit  and  I  lament ;  but  a  community  can  not  grow  up  at  once 
from  a  log-cabin,  with  the  wolf  at  the  door  and  the  savage  in  the 
neighboring  thicket,  into  the  order  and  beauty  of  communities, 
which  have  been  maturing  for  centuries.  We  must  remember, 
too,  that  all  these  blemishes  of  an  infant  settlement,  the  inseparable 
accompaniment  of  that  stage  of  progress  and  phase  of  society  and 
life,  have  their  counterpart  at  the  other  end  of  the  scale,  in  the 
festering  iniquities  of  large  cities,  the  gigantic  frauds  of  specula- 
tion and  trade,  the  wholesale  corruptions,  in  a  word,  of  older  so- 
cieties. "When  I  reflect  that  the  day  we  celebrate  found  us  a 
feeble  strip  of  thirteen  colonies  along  the  coast,  averaging  at  most 
a  little  more  than  150,000  inhabitants  each  ;  and  that  this,  its 
eighty-fourth  return,  sees  us  grown  to  thirty-three  States,  scattered 
through  the  interior  and  pushed  to  the  Pacific,  averaging  nearly 
a  million  of  inhabitants,  each  a  well-compacted  representative 
republic,  securing  to  its  citizens  a  larger  amount  of  the  substantial 
blessings  of  life  than  are  enjoyed  by  equal  numbers  of  people  in 
the  oldest  and  most  prosperous  States  of  Europe,  I  am  lost  in  won- 


10  SUCCESS   OF  OUE  EEPUBLIC. 

der;  and,  as  a  sufficient  answer  to  the  charge  of  degeneracy,  I  am 
tempted  to  exclaim,  Look  around  you  ! 

But,  merely  to  fill  up  the  wilderness  with  a  population  provided 
with  the  ordinary  institutions  and  carrying  on  the  customary  pur- 
suits of  civilized  life — though  surely  no  mean  achievement — was  by 
no  means  the  whole  of  the  work  allotted  to  the  United  States,  and 
thus  far  performed  with  signal  activity,  intelligence,  and  success. 
The  Founders  of  America  and  their  descendants  have  accomplished 
more  and  better  things.  On  the  basis  of  a  rapid  geographical  ex- 
tension, and  with  the  force  of  teeming  numbers,  they  have,  in  the 
very  infancy  of  their  political  existence,  successfully  aimed  at  higher 
progress  in  a  generous  civilization.  The  mechanical  arts  have  been 
cultivated  with  unusual  aptitude.  Agriculture,  manufactures,  com- 
merce, navigation,  whether  by  sails  or  steam,  and  the  art  of  print- 
ing in  all  its  forms,  have  been  pursued  with  surprising  skill.  Great 
improvements  have  been  made  in  all  these  branches  of  industry, 
and  in  the  machinery  pertaining  to  them,  which  have  been  eagerly 
adopted  in  Europe.  A  more  adequate  provision  has  been  made  for 
popular  education  than  in  almost  any  other  country.  I  believe  that 
in  the  cities  of  Boston,  New  York,  and  Philadelphia  more  money, 
in  proportion  to  the  population,  is  raised  by  taxation  for  the  support 
of  common  schools,  than  in  any  other  cities  in  the  world.  There  are 
more  seminaries  in  the  United  States  where  a  respectable  academi- 
cal education  can  be  obtained — more,  I  still  mean,  in  proportion  to 
the  population — than  in  any  other  country,  except  Germany.  The 
Fine  Arts  have  reached  a  high  degree  of  excellence.  The  taste  for 
music  is  rapidly  spreading  in  town  and  country ;  and  every  year 
witnesses  productions  from  the  pencil  and  the  chisel  of  American 
sculptors  and  painters  which  would  adorn  any  gallery  in  the  world. 
Our  astronomers,  mathematicians,  naturalists,  chemists,  engineers, 
jurists,  publicists,  historians,  poets,  novelists,  and  lexicographers 
have  placed  themselves  on  a  level  with  those  of  the  elder  world. 
The  best  dictionaries  of  the  English  language,  since  Johnson,  are 
those  published  in  America.  Our  constitutions,  whether  of  the 
United  States  or  of  the  separate  States,  exclude  all  public  provision 
for  the  maintenance  of  religion,  but  in  no  part  of  Christendom  is  it 
more  generously  supported.  Sacred  science  is  pursued  as  diligently, 
and  the  pulpit  commands  as  high  a  degree  of  respect  in  the  United 
States  as  in  those  countries  where  the  Church  is  publicly  endowed ; 
while  the  American  missionary  operations  have  won  the  admira* 


SUCCESS  OF  OUli  REPUBLIC.  \\ 

tion  of  the  civilized  world.  Nowhere,  I  am  persuaded,  are  there 
more  liberal  contributions  to  public-spirited  and  charitable  objects. 
In  a  word,  there  is  no  branch  of  the  mechanical  or  fine  arts,  no 
department  of  science,  exact  or  applied,  no  form  of  polite  litera- 
ture, no  description  of  social  improvement,  in  which,  due  allow- 
ance being  made  for  the  means  and  resources  at  command,  the  pro- 
gress of  the  United  States  has  not  been  satisfactory,  and,  in  some- 
respects,  astonishing.  At  this  moment,  the  rivers  and  seas  of  the 
globe  are  navigated  with  that  marvelous  application  of  steam  as  a 
propelling  power  which  was  first  effected  by  Fulton  ;  the  monster 
steamship,  which  has  just  reached  our  shores,  rides  at  anchor  in 
the  waters  in  which  the  first  successful  experiment  of  steam  navi- 
gation  was  made.  The  harvests  of  the  civilized  world  are  gathered 
by  American  reapers ;  the  newspapers  which  lead  the  journalism 
of  Europe  are  printed  on  American  presses ;  there  are  railroads  in 
Europe  constructed  by  American  engineers  and  traveled  by  Ameri- 
can locomotives ;  troops  armed  with  American  weapons,  and  ships 
of  war  built  in  American  dock-yards.  In  the  factories  of  Europe 
there  is  machinery  of  American  invention  or  improvement ;  in 
their  observatories,  telescopes  of  American  construction ;  and  appa- 
ratus of  American  invention  for  recording  the  celestial  phenomena. 
America  contests  with  Europe  the  introduction  into  actual  use  of 
the  electric  telegraph,  and  her  mode  of  operating  it  is  adopted 
throughout  the  French  empire.  American  authors  in  almost  every 
department  are  found  on  the  shelves  of  European  libraries.  It  is 
true  no  American  Homer,  Virgil,  Dante,  Copernicus,  Shakspeare, 
Bacon,  Milton,  Newton  has  risen  on  the  world.  These  mighty 
genuises  seem  to  be  exceptions  in  the  history  of  the  human  mind. 
Favorable  circumstances  do  not  produce  them,  nor  does  the  ab- 
sence of  favorable  circumstances  prevent  their  appearance.  Homer 
rose  in  the  dawn  of  Grecian  culture  ;  Virgil  flourished  in  the  court 
of  Augustus ;  Dante  ushered  in  the  birth  of  the  new  European  civ- 
ilization ;  Copernicus  was  reared  in  a  Polish  cloister ;  Shakspeare 
was  trained  in  the  green-room  of  the  theater ;  Milton  was  formed 
while  the  elements  of  English  thought  and  life  were  fermenting 
toward  a  great  political  and  moral  revolution ;  Newton,  under  the 
profligacy  of  the  Restoration.  Ages  may  elapse  before  any  coun- 
try will  produce  a  man  like  these,  as  two  centuries  nave  passed 
since  the  last  mentioned  of  them  was  born.  But  if  it  is  really  a 
matter  of  reproach  to  the  United  States  that,  in  the  comparatively 


12  SUCCESS  OF  OUR  REPUBLIC. 

short  period  of  their  existence  as  a  people,  they  have  not  added 
another  name  to  this  illustrious  list  (which  is  equally  true  of  all 
the  other  nations  of  the  earth),  they  may  proudly  boast  of  one  ex- 
ample of  life  and  character,  one  career  of  disinterested  service,  one 
model  of  public  virtue,  one  type  of  human  excellence,  of  which  all 
the  countries  and  all  the  ages  may  be  searched  in  vain  for  the  par- 
allel. I  need  not — on  this  day  I  need  not — speak  the  peerless 
name.  It  is  stamped  on  your  hearts,  it  glistens  in  your  eyes,  it  is 
written  on  every  page  of  your  history,  on  the  battle-fields  of  the 
Bevolution,  on  the  monuments  of  your  fathers,  on  the  portals  of 
your  capitols.  It  is  heard  in  every  breeze  that  whispers  over  the 
fields  of  independent  America.  And  he  was  all  our  own.  He 
grew  up  on  the  soil  of  America ;  he  was  nurtured  at  her  bosom. 
She  loved  and  trusted  him  in  his  youth ;  she  honored  and  revered 
him  in  his  age,  and  though  she  did  not  wrait  for  death  to  canonize 
his  name,  his  precious  memory,  with  each  succeeding  year,  has 
sunk  more  deeply  into  the  hearts  of  his  countrymen. 

But,  as  I  have  already  stated,  it  was  urged  against  us  on  the  oc- 
casion alluded  to,  that  within  the  last  sixty  years  the  United  States 
have  degenerated,  and  that  by  a  series  of  changes,  at  first  appar- 
ently inconsiderable,  but  all  leading  by  a  gradual  and  steady  pro- 
gression to  the  result,  a  very  discreditable  condition  of  things  has 
been  brought  about  in  this  country. 

"Without  stating  precisely  what  these  supposed  changes  are,  this 
"result"  is  set  forth  in  a  somewhat  remarkable  series  of  reproach- 
ful allegations,  far  too  numerous  to  be  repeated  in  detail  in  what 
remains  of  this  address,  but  implying,  in  the  aggregate,  the  general 
corruption  of  the  country,  political,  social,  and  moral.  The  severity 
of  these  reproaches  is  not  materially  softened  by  a  few  courteous 
words  of  respect  for  the  American  people.  I  shall  in  a  moment 
select  for  examination  two  or  three  of  the  most  serious  of  these 
charges,  observing  only  at  present  that  the  prosperous  condition 
of  the  country,  which  I  have  imperfectly  sketched,  and  especially 
its  astonishing  growth,  during  the  present  century,  in  the  richest 
products,  material  and  intellectual,  of  a  rapidly  maturing  civiliza- 
tion, furnish  a  sufficient  defense  against  the  general  charge.  Men 
do  not  gather  the  grapes  and  figs  of  science,  art,  taste,  wealth,  and 
manners  from  the  thorns  and  thistles  of  lawlessness,  venality,  fraud, 
and  violence.  These  fair  fruits  grow  only  in  the  gardens  of  public 
peace  and  industry,  protected  by  the  law. 


SUCCESS   OF  OUE  EEPUBLIC.  13 

Iii  the  outset  let  it  be  observed,  then,  that  the  assumed  and  as- 
signed cause  of  the  reproachful  and  deplorable  state  of  things  alleged 
to  exist  in  the  United  States  is  as  imaginary  as  the  effects  are  ex- 
aggerated or  wholly  unfounded  in  fact.  The  "  checks  established 
by  Washington  and  his  associates  on  an  unbalanced  democracy  in 
the  General  Government"  have  never,  as  is  alleged,  "  been  swept 
away" — not  one  of  them.  The  great  constitutional  check  of  this 
kind,  as  far  as  the  General  Government  is  concerned,  is  the  limita- 
tion of  the  granted  powers  of  Congress;  the  reservation  of  the 
rights  of  the  States ;  and  the  organization  of  the  Senate  as  their 
representative.  These  constitutional  provisions,  little  comprehend- 
ed abroad,  which  gives  to  the  smallest  States  equal  weight  with 
the  largest,  in  one  branch  of  the  Legislature,  impose  a  very  efficient 
check  on  the  power  of  a  numerical  majority;  and  neither  in  this 
nor  any  other  provision  <of  the  Constitution,  bearing  on  the  subject, 
has  the  slightest  change  ever  been  made.  Not  only  so,  but  the 
prevalent  policy  since  1860  has  been  in  favor  of  the  reserved  rights 
of  the  States,  and  in  consequent  derogation  of  the  powers  of  the 
General  Government.  In  fact,  when  the  Reform  Bill  was  agitated 
in  England,  and  by  the  conservative  statesmen  of  that  country  stig- 
matized as  "  a  revolution,"  it  was  admitted  that  the  United  States 
possessed  in  their  written  Constitution,  and  in  the  difficulty  of  pro- 
curing amendments  to  it,  a  conservative  principle  unknown  to  the 
English  Government. 

In  truth,  if  by  "  an  unbalanced  democracy"  is  meant  such  a  gov- 
ernment as  that  of  Athens,  or  republican  Rome,  or  the  English 
Commonwealth,  or  revolutionary  France,  there  not  only  never 
was,  but  never  can  be  such  a  thing  in  the  United  States.  The  very 
fact  that  the  great  mass  of  the  population  is  broken  up  into  sepa- 
rate States,  now  thirty-three  in  number  and  rapidly  multiplying, 
each  with  its  local  interests  and  center  of  political  influence,  is  itself 
a  very  efficient  check  on  such  a  democracy.  Each  of  these  States 
is  a  representative  commonwealth,  composed  of  two  branches,  with 
the  ordinary  divisions  of  executive,  legislative,  and  judicial  power. 
It  is  true  that  in  some  of  the  States  some  trifling  property'  qualifi- 
cations of  the  elective  franchise  have  been  abrogated,  but  not  with 
any  perceptible  effect  on  the  number  or  character  of  the  voters. 
The  system,  varying  a  little  in  the  different  States,  always  made  a 
near  approach  to  universal  suffrage ;  and  the  great  increase  of 
voters  has  been  caused  by  the  increase  of  population.     Under  elect- 


14 


SUCCESS  OF  OUR  REPUBLIC. 


ive  Governments,  with  a  free  press,  with  ardent  party  divisions, 
and  questions  that  touch  the  heart  of  the  people,  petty  limitations 
on  the  right  of  suffrage  are  indeed  "  cobwebs1'  which  the  popular 
will  breaks  through.  The  voter  may  be  one  of  ten,  or  one  of  fifty 
of  the  citizens,  but  on  such  questions  he  will  vote  in  conformity 
with  the  will  and  wish  of  the  mass.  If  he  resists  it,  tke  Govern- 
ment itself,  like  that  of  France  in  1848,  will  go  down.  Agitation 
and  popular  commotion  scoff  at  checks  and  balances,  and  as  much 
in  England  as  in  America.  When  Nottingham  Castle  is  in  ruins 
and  half  Bristol  a  heap  of  ashes,  monarchs  and  ministers  must 
bend.  The  Reform  Bill  must  then  pass  "  through  Parliament  or 
over  it,"  in  the  significant  words  of  Lord  Macaulay;  and  that, 
whether  the  constituencies  are  great  or  small.  That  a  restricted 
suffrage  and  a  limited  constituency  do  not  always  insure  independ- 
ence on  the  part  of  the  representative  may  be  inferred  from  the 
rather  remarkable  admission  of  Lord  Grey,  in  this  very  debate, 
that  "a  large  proportion  of  the  members  of  the  present  House  of 
Commons  are,  from  various  circumstances,  afraid  to  act  on  their 
real  opinions,"  on  the  subject  of  the  Reform  Bill  before  them. 

I  have  already  observed  that  it  would  be  impossible,  within  the 
limits  of  this  address,  to  enter  into  a  detailed  examination  of  all 
the  matters  laid  to  our  charge  on  the  occasion  alluded  to.  The 
Ministerial  leader  (Lord  Granville)  candidly  admitted,  in  the  course 
of  the  debate,  that,  though  he  concurred  with  his  brother  Peer  in 
some  of  his  remarks,  "they  were  generally  much  exaggerated." 
We,  too,  must  admit  with  regret,  that  for  some  of  the  statements 
made  to  our  discredit,  there  is  a  greater  foundation  in  fact  than 
we  could  wish ;  that  our  political  system,  like  all  human  institu- 
tions, however  wise  in  theory  and  successful  in  its  general  opera- 
tion, is  liable  to  abuse ;  that  party,  the  bane  of  all  free  Govern- 
ments, works  its  mischief  here ;  that  some  bad  men  are  raised  to 
office,  and  some  good  men  excluded  from  it;  that  public  virtue 
here,  as  elsewhere,  sometimes  breaks  down  under  the  lust  of  place 
or  of  gold ;  that  unwise  laws  are  sometimes  passed  by  our  Legis- 
latures, and  unpopular  laws  sometimes  violated  by  the  mob ;  in 
short,  that  the  frailties  and  vice  of  men  and  of  Governments  are 
displayed  in  Republics  as  they  are  in  Monarchies,  in  the  New 
World  as  in  the  Old ;  whether  to  a  greater,  equal,  or  less  degree, 
time  must  show.  The  question  may  as  pertinently  be  asked  of 
nations  as  of  individuals,  "Why  beholdest  thou  the  mote  that  is 


SUCCESS  OF  OUR  EEPUBLIC.  15 

in  thy  brother's  eye,  and  considerest  not  the  beam  that  is  in  thine 
own  eye?" 

An  honest  and  impartial  administration  of  justice  is  the  corner- 
stone of  the  social  system.  The  most  serious  charges  brought 
against  us,  on  the  occasion  alluded  to,  are,  that  owing  to  the  all- 
pervading  corruption  of  the  conntry,  the  Judges  of  the  Supreme 
Court  of  the  United  States,  who  once  commanded  the  public  re- 
spect at  home  and  abroad,  are  now  appointed  for  party  purposes, 
and  that  some  of  their  decisions  have  excited  the  disgust  of  all 
high-minded  men ;  that  the  Judges  of  most  of  the  State  Courts 
hold  their  offices  by  election,  some  by  annual  election;  that  the 
undisputed  dominion  of  the  numerical  majority,  which  has  been 
established,  will  not  allow  the  desires  and  passions  of  the  hour  to 
be  checked  by  a  firm  administration  of  the  law ;  and  that  in  con- 
sequence the  laws  in  this  country  have  become  mere  cobwebs  to 
resist  either  the  rich,  or  the  popular  feeling  of  the  moment ;  in  a 
word,  that  the  American  Astraea,  like  the  goddess  of  old,  has  fled 
the  stars.  I  need  not  say,  fellow-citizens,  in  your  hearing,  that  to 
wherever  else  this  may  be  true  (and  I  believe  it  to  be  truo  nowhere 
in  the  United  States),  it  is  not  true  in  Massachusetts;  and  that 
Westminster  Hall  never  boasted  a  Court  more  honored  or  more 
worthy  of  honor  than  that  which  holds  its  office  by  a  life-tenure 
and  administers  impartial  justice,  without  respect  of  persons,  to 
the  people  of  Massachusetts. 

Such  a  Court  the  people  of  Massachusetts  have  no  wish  to  change 
for  an  elective  judiciary,  holding  office  by  a  short  tenure.  In  their 
opinion,  evinced  in  their  practice,  this  all-important  branch  of  the 
Government  ought  to  be  removed,  as  far  as  possible,  beyond  the 
reach  of  political  influences ;  but  it  is  surely  the  grossest  of  errors 
to  speak  of  the  tribunals  of  the  United  States  as  being  generally 
tainted  with  party,  or  to  represent  the  law,  in  the  main,  as  having 
ceased  to  be  respected  and  enforced.  Taking  a  comprehensive 
view  of  the  subject,  and  not  drawing  sweeping  inferences  from  ex- 
ceptional occurrences,  it  may  be  safely  said  that  the  law  of  the 
land  is  ably,  cheaply,  and  impartially  administered  in  the  United 
States,  and  implicitly  obeyed.  On  a  few  questions,  not  half  a 
dozen  in  number  since  the  organization  of  the  Government,  and 
those  partaking  of  a  political  character,  the  decisions  of  the  Court, 
like  the  questions  to  which  they  refer,  have  divided  public  opinion. 
But  there  is  surelv  no  tribunal  in  the  world  which,  like  the  Su- 


IQ  SUCCESS  OF  OUB  BEPUBLIC. 

preme  Court  of  the  United  States,  has,  since  the  foundation  of  the 
Government,  not  only  efficiently  performed  the  ordinary  functions 
of  a  tribunal  of  the  last  resort,  but  which  sits  in  judgment  on  the 
Courts  and  Legislatures  of  sovereign  States,  on  acts  of  Congress 
itself,  and  pronounces  the  law  to  a  Confederation  coextensive  with 
Europe.  I  know  of  no  such  protection,  under  any  other  Govern- 
ment, against  unconstitutional  legislation,  if,  indeed,  any  legisla- 
tion can  be  called  unconstitutional  where  Parliament,  alike  in 
theory  and  practice,  is  omnipotent. 

With  respect  to  the  partisan  character  of  our  Courts,  inferred 
from  the  manner  in  which  the  judges  are  appointed,  the  judges  of 
the  United  States  Courts,  which  are  the  tribunals  specifically  re- 
flected on,  are  appointed  in  the  same  manner  and  hold  their  offices 
by  the  same  tenure  as  the  English  judges  of  the  Courts  of  common 
law.  They  are  appointed  for  life,  by  the  executive  power,  no 
doubt  from  the  dominant  party  of  the  day,  and  this  equally  in  both 
countries.  The  presiding  magistrate  of  the  other  branch  of  En- 
glish jurisprudence — the  Lord  Chancellor — is  displaced  with  every 
change  in  politics.  In  seventy-one  years,  since  the  adoption  of  the 
Federal  Constitution,  there  have  been  but  four  Chief  Justices  of  the 
United  States,  and  the  fourth  is  still  on  the  bench.  In  thirty-three 
years  there  have  been  nine  appointments  of  a  Lord  Chancellor,  on 
as  many  changes  of  administration,  and  seven  different  individuals 
have  filled  the  office,  of  whom  five  are  living.  As  a  member  of 
the  Cabinet  and  Speaker  of  the  House  of  Lords,  he  is  necessarily 
deep  in  all  the  political  controversies  of  the  day,  and  his  vast  official 
influence  and  patronage  are  felt  throughout  Church  and  State. 
The  Chief  Justice  of  England  is  usually  a  member  of  the  House  of 
Lords,  sometimes  a  member  of  the  Cabinet.  As  a  necessary  con- 
sequence, on  all  questions  of  a  political  nature,  the  Court  is  open 
to  the  same  suspicion  of  partisanship  as  in  the  United  States,  and 
for  a  much  stronger  reason,  inasmuch  as  our  Judges  can  never  be 
members  of  the  Cabinet  or  of  Congress.  During  a  considerable 
part  of  his  career,  Lord  Mansfield  was  engaged  in  an  embittered 
political  warfare  with  the  Earl  of  Chatham  in  the  House  of  Lords. 
All  the  resources  of  the  English  language  were  exhausted  by  Junius 
in  desolating  and  unpunished  party  libels  on  the  Chief  Justice  of 
England  ;  and  when  the  capital  of  the  British  Empire  lay  at  the 
mercy  of  Lord  George  Gordon's  mob,  its  fury  was  concentrated 
against  the  same  venerable  magistrate. 


SUCCESS  OF  OUR  REPUBLIC.  17 

The  jurisprudence  of  this  country  strikes  its  roots  deep  into  that 
of  England.  Her  courts,  her  magistrates,  her  whole  judicial  system 
are  regarded  by  the  profession  in  America  with  respect  and  affec- 
tion. But  if,  beginning  at  a  period  coeval  with  the  settlement  of 
America,  we  run  down  the  line  of  the  Chancellors  and  Chief 
Justices,  from  Lord  Bacon  and  Sir  Edward  Coke  to  the  close  of  the 
last  century,  it  will,  in  scarce  any  generation,  be  found  free  from 
the  record  of  personal,  official,  and  political  infirmity,  from  which 
an  unfriendly  censor  might  have  drawn  inferences  hostile  to  the 
integrity  of  the  tribunals  of  England,  if  not  to  the  soundness  of  her 
public  sentiment.  But  he  would  have  erred.  The  character  of  gov- 
ernments and  of  nations  must  be  gathered  from  a  large  experience, 
from  general  results,  from  the  testimony  of  ages.  A  thousand 
years,  and  a  revolution  in  almost  every  century,  have  been  neces- 
sary to  build  up  the  constitutional  fabric  of  England  to  its  present, 
proportions  and  strength.  Let  her  not  play  the  unfriendly  censor, 
if  some  portions  of  our  newly-constructed  State  machinery  are 
sometimes  heard  to  grate  and  jar.  With  respect  to  the  great  two- 
edged  sword  with  which  justice  smites  the  unfaithful  public  ser- 
vant, the  present  Lord  Chancellor  (late  Chief  Justice)  of  England 
observes,  of  the  acquittal  of  Lord  Melville  in  180G,  that  "it  showed 
that  impeachment  can  no  longer  be  relied  upon  for  the  conviction 
of  State  offenses,  and  can  only  be  considered  as  a  test  of  party 
strength;"  while  of  the  standard  of  professional  literature,  the 
same  venerable  magistrate,  who  unites  the  vigor  of  youth  to  the 
experience  and  authority  of  four-score  years,  remarks,  with  a  can- 
dor not  very  flattering  to  the  United  States,  that  down  to  the  end 
of  the  reign  of  George  the  Third  (A.  D.  1820),  "England  was  ex- 
celled by  cotemporary  judicial  authors,  not  only  in  France,  Italy, 
and  Germany,  but  eve?i  in  America."  I  will  only  add,  that,  of  the 
very  great  number  of  judges  of  our  Federal  and  State  Courts — 
although  frugal  salaries,  short  terms  of  office,  and  the  elective  ten- 
ure may  sometimes  have  called  incompetent  men  to  the  bench — it 
is  not  within  my  recollection  that  a  single  individual  has  been  sus- 
pected of  pecuniary  corruption. 

Next  in  importance  to  the  integrity  of  the  Courts  in  a  well-gov- 
erned State,  is  the  honesty  of  the  Legislature.  A  remarkable  in- 
stance of  wholesale  corruption,  in  one  of  the  new  States  of  the 
"West,  consisting  of  the  alleged  bribery  of  a  considerable  number 
of  the  members  of  the  Legislature,  by  a  corrupt  distribution  of 


1&  SUCCESS  OF  OUR  REPUBLIC. 

railroad  bonds,  is  quoted  by  Lord  Grey  as  a  specimen  of  the  cor- 
ruption which  has  infected  the  legislation  both  of  Congress  and  of 
the  States,  and  as  showing  "  the  state  of  things  which  has  arisen 
in  that  country."  It  was  a  very  discreditable  occurrence  certainly 
(if  truly  reported,  and  of  that  I  know  nothing),  illustrative,  I  hope, 
not  of  "  a  state  of  things,"  which  has  arisen  in  America,  but  of  the 
degree  to  which  large  bodies  of  men,  of  whom  better  things  might 
have  been  expected,  may  sometimes  become  so  infected,  when  the 
mania  of  speculation  is  epidemic,  that  principle,  prudence,  and  com- 
mon sense  break  down  in  the  eagerness  to  clutch  at  sudden  wealth. 
In  a  bubble  season  the  ordinary  rules  of  morality  lose  their  con- 
trolling power  for  a  while,  under  the  temptation  of  the  day.  The 
main  current  of  private  morality  in  England  probably  flowed  as 
deep  and  strong  as  ever,  both  before  and  after  the  South  Sea  frauds, 
when  Cabinet  ministers  and  Court  ladies,  and  some  of  the  highest 
personages  in  the  realm,  ran  mad  after  dishonest  gains,  and  this  in 
England's  Augustan  age.  Lord  Granville,  in  reply,  observed  that 
the  "  early  legislation  of  England,  in  such  matters,  was  not  so  free 
from  reproach  as  to  justify  us  in  attributing  the  bribery  in  America 
solely  to  the  Democratic  character  of  the  Government,"  and  the 
biographer  of  George  Stephenson  furnishes  facts  which  abundantly 
confirm  the  truth  of  this  remark.  After  describing  the  extravagant 
length  to  which  railway  speculation  was  carried  in  that  country  in 
1844-45,  Mr.  Smiles  proceeds : 

"  Parliament,  whose  previous  conduct  in  connection  with  railway  legislation  was 
so  open  to  reprehension,  interposed  no  check,  attempted  no  remedy.  On  the  con- 
trary, it  helped  to  intensify  the  evil  arising  from  this  unseemly  state  of  things.  Many 
of  its  members  were  themselves  involved  in  the  mania,  and  as  much  interested  in 
its  continuance  as  even  the  vulgar  herd  of  money-grubbers.  The  railway  pro- 
spectuses now  issued,  unlike  the  Liverpool  and  Manchester  and  London  and  Bir- 
mingham schemes,  were  headed  by  Peers,  Baronets,  landed  proprietors,  and  strings 
of  M.  P.'s  Thus  it  was  found  in  1S45  that  not  fewer  than  one  hundred  and  fifty- 
seven  Members  of  Parliament  were  on  the  list  of  new  Companies,  as  subscribers 
for  sums  ranging  from  two  hundred  and  ninety-one  thousand  pounds  sterling  (not 
far  from  a  million  and  a  half  of  dollars)  downward  !  The  proprietors  of  new  lines 
even  came  to  boast  of  their  Parliamentary  strength,  and  the  number  of  votes  they 
could  command  in  the  House.  The  influence  which  land  owners  had  formerly 
brought  to  bear  upon  Parliament  in  resisting  railways,  when  called  for  by  the  public 
necessities,  was  now  employed  to  carry  measmes  of  a  far  different  kind,  originated 
by  cupidity,  knavery,  and  folly.  But  these  gentlemen  had  discovered  by  this  time, 
that  railways  were  as  a  golden  mine  to  them.  They  sat  at  railway  boards,  some- 
times selling  to  themselves  their  own  lands,  at  their  own  price,  and  paying  them- 
selves with  the  money  of  the  unfortunate  stockholders.  Others  used  the  railway 
mania  as  a  convenient,  and  to  themselves  inexj^ensive,  mode  of  purchasing  con- 


SUCCESS  OF  OUE  EEPUBLIC.  19 

stituencies.  It  was  strongly  suspected  that  honorable  members  adopted  what 
Yankee  legislators  call  log-rolling;'  that  is,  k  You  help  mc  roll  my  log,  and  I  will 
help  you  to  roll  yours  '  At  all  events,  it  is  a  matter  of  fact,  that,  through  Parlia- 
mentary influence,  many  utterly  ruinous  branches  and  extensions,  projected  during 
the  mania,  calculated  only  to  benefit  the  inhabitants  of  a  few  miserable  old  bor- 
oughs, accidentally  omitted  from  schedule  A,  were  authorized  in  the  memorable 
session  of  1844-45. — [Smiles'  Life  of  Stephenson,  p.  871.] 

These  things,  be  it  remembered,  took  place,  not  in  a  newly- 
gathered  republic,  just  sprouting,  so  to  say,  into  existence  on  the 
frontier,  inhabited  by  the  pioneers  of  civilization,  who  had  rather 
rushed  together,  than  grown  up  to  the  moral  traditions  of  an 
ancient  community ;  but  they  took  place  at  the  metropolis  of  the 
oldest  monarchy  in  Europe,  the  center  of  the  civilized  world,  where 
public  sentiment  is  propped  by  the  authority  of  ages;  heart  of  old 
English  oak  encased  with  the  life  circles  of  a  thousand  years.  I 
was  in  London  at  the  height  of  the  mania ;  I  saw  the  Eailway 
King,  as  he  was  called,  at  the  zenith  of  his  power ;  a  member  of 
Parliament,  through  which  he  walked  quietly,  it  was  said,  "  with 
some  sixteen  railway  bills  under  his  arm  ;"  almost  a  fourth  estate 
of  the  realm ;  his  receptions  crowded  like  those  of  a  Royal  Prince ; 
and  I  saw  the  gilded  bubble  burst.  But  I  did  not  write  home  to 
my  Government,  that  this  marvelous  "  state  of  things"  showed  the 
corruption  which  springs  from  hereditary  institutions,  nor  did  I 
hint  that  an  extension  of  the  right  of  suffrage,  and  a  moderate  in- 
fusion of  the  democratic  principle,  was  the  only  remedy. 

I  have  time  for  a  few  words  only,  on  the  "unscrupulous  and 
overbearing  tone"  which  is  said  by  Lord  Grey  to  "  mark  our  in- 
tercourse with  foreign  nations." 

"  If  any  one  European  nation,"  he  observes,  "  were  to  act  in  the  same  manner,  it 
could  not  escape  war  for  a  single  year.  We  ourselves  have  been  repeatedly  on  the 
verge  of  a  quarrel  with  the  United  States.  "With  no  divergence  of  interest,  but  the 
strongest  possible  interest  on  both  sides  to  maintain  the  closest  friendship,  we  have 
more  than  once  been  on  the  eve  of  a  quarrel ;  and  that  great  calamity  has  only 
been  avoided,  because  the  Government  of  this  country  has  had  the  good  sense  to 
treat  the  Government  of  the  United  States  much  as  we  should  treat  spoiled 
children,  and  though  the  right  was  clearly  on  our  side,  has  yielded  to  the  unreason- 
able pretensions  of  the  United  States.  There  is  danger  that  this  may  be  pushed  too 
far,  and  that  a  question  may  arise  on  which  our  honor  and  our  interests  will  make 
concession  on  our  part  impossible. 

No  one  is  an  impartial  judge  in  his  own  case.  If  we  should  meet 
these  rather  indiscreet  suggestions  in  the  only  way  in  which  a 
charge  without  specifications  can  be  met — by  a  denial  as  broad  as 


20  SUCCESS  OF  OUE  EEPUBLIC. 

the  assertion — the  matter  would  bo  left  precisely  as  it  stood  before  ; 
that  is,  each  party  in  its  national  controversies  thinks  itself  right, 
and  its  opponent  wrong,  which  is  not  an  uncommon  case  in  human 
affairs,  public  and  private.  This  at  least  may  be  added,  without 
fear  of  contradiction,  that  the  United  States,  in  their  intercourse 
with  foreign  Governments,  have  abstained  from  all  interference  in 
European  politics,  and  have  confined  themselves  to  the  protection 
of  their  own  rights  and  interests.  As  far  as  concerns  theoretical 
doctrines  on  the  subjects  usually  controverted  between  Govern- 
ments, a  distinguished  English  magistrate  and  civilian  pronounces 
the  authority  of  the  United  States  "  to  be  always  great  upon  all 
questions  of  International  Law."  (R.  Phillimore's  International 
Law,  Vol.  III.,  page  252.)  Many  of  the  questions  wmich  have 
arisen  between  this  country  and  England  have  been  such  as  most 
keenly  touch  the  national  susceptibilities.  That  in  discussing 
these  questions,  at  home  and  abroad,  no  dispatch  has  been  written, 
no  word  uttered,  in  a  warmer  tone  than  might  be  wished,  is  not  to 
be  expected,  and  is  as  little  likely  to  have  happened  on  one  side  of 
the  water  as  the  other.  But  that  the  intercourse  of  the  United 
States  with  Great  Britain  has,  in  the  main,  been  conducted,  earnestly 
indeed,  as  becomes  powerful  States  treating  important  subjects,  but 
courteously,  gravely,  and  temperately,  no  one  well  acquainted  with 
the  facts  will,  I  think,  deny. 

It  would  not  be  difficult  to  pass  in  review  our  principal  contro- 
versies with  England,  and  to  show  that  when  she  has  conceded  any 
portion  of  our  demands,  it  has  not  been  because  they  were  urged 
in  "  an  unscrupulous  and  overbearing  tone"  (an  idea  not  very  com- 
plimentary to  herself),  but  because  they  were  founded  on  justice 
and  sustained  by  argument.  This  is  not  the  occasion  for  such  a  re- 
view. In  a  public  address,  which  I  had  the  honor  of  delivering 
in  this  Hall  last  September,  I  vindicated  the  negotiations  relative  to 
the  Northeastern  Boundary  from  the  gross  and  persistent  misrep- 
resentations of  wrhich  they  have  been  the  subject ;  and  I  will  now 
only  briefly  allude  to  by  far  the  most  important  chapter  in  our  dip- 
lomatic history.  It  will  show,  by  a  very  striking  example,  whether, 
in  her  intercourse  with  foreign  nations,  America  has  been  in  the 
habit  of  assuming  an  unscrupulous  and  overbearing  tone,  or  whether 
she  has  been  the  victim  of  those  qualities  on  the  part  of  others. 

After  the  short-lived  peace  of  Amiens,  a  new  war,  of  truly 
Titanic  proportions,  broke  out  between  France  and  England.     In 


SUCCESS  OF  OUE  REPUBLIC,  oj 

the  progress  of  this  tremendous  struggle,  and  for  the  purpose  of 
mutual  destruction,  a  succession  of  Imperial  decrees  and  orders  in 
Council  were  issued  by  the  two  powers,  by  which  all  neutral  com- 
merce was  annihilated.  Each  of  the  great  belligerents  maintained 
that  his  adversary's  decree  was  a  violation  of  International  Law  ; 
each  ustified  his  own  edict  on  the  ground  of  retaliation;  and  be- 
tween these  great  conflicting  forces  the  rights  of  neutrals  were 
crushed.  Under  these  orders  and  decrees  it  is  estimated  that  one 
hundred  millions  of  American  property  were  swept  from  the 
ocean ;  of  the  losses  and  sufferings  of  our  citizens,  in  weary  de- 
tention for  years  at  Courts  of  Admiralty  and  Vice-Admiralty,  all 
round  the  globe,  there  can  be  no  estimate.  But  peace  returned  to 
the  world ;  time  wore  away ;  and  after  one  generation  of  the  ori- 
ginal sufferers  had  sunk,  many  of  them  sorrow:stricken  and  ruined, 
into  the  grave,  the  Government  of  King  Louis  Philippe,  in  France, 
acknowledged  the  wrong  of  the  Imperial  regime,  by  a  late  and 
partial  measure  of  indemnification.*  England,  in  addition  to  the 
capture  of  our  ships  and  the  confiscation  of  their  cargoes,  had  sub- 
jected the  United  States  to  the  indignity  of  taking  her  seamen  by 
impressment  from  our  vessels — a  practice  which,  in  addition  to  its 
illegality  and  cruelty,  often  led  to  the  impressment  of  our  own 
citizens,  both  naturalized  and  native.  For  this  intolerable  wrong 
(which  England  herself  would  not  have  endured  a  day  from  any 
foreign  Power),  and  for  the  enormous  losses  accruing  under  the 
orders  in  Council,  the  United  States  not  only  never  received  any 
indemnification,  but  the  losses  and  sufferings  of  a  war  of  two  years 
and  a  half  duration  were  superadded.  These  orders  were  at  the 
time  regarded  by  the  liberal  school  of  British  statesmen  as  unjust 
and  oppressive  against  neutrals ;  and  though  the  eminent  civilian, 
Sir  William  Scott  (afterwards  Lord  Stowrell),  who  presided  in  the 
British  Court  of  Admiralty,  and  who  had  laid  the  foundations  of  a 
princely  fortune  by  fees  accruing  in  prize  causes, t  deemed  it  "  ex- 
treme indecency"  to  admit  the  possibility,  that  the  orders  in  Coun- 
cil could  be  in  contravention  of  the  public  law,  it  is  now  the  almost 
universal  admission  of  the  text  writers  that  such  was  the  case.  As 
lately  as  1847,  the  present  Lord   Chancellor  —  then  Lord  Chief 


*  By  the  treaty  negotiated  with  great  skill  by  Hon.  W.  C.  Rives. 
t  Sketch  of  the  Lives  of  Lords  Stow  ell  and  Eldon,  by  ¥m.  Edward  Surtees 
D.  C.  L.  (a  relative),  p.  83. 


22  SUCCESS  OF  OUK  KEPUBLIC. 

Justice  of  England — used  this  remarkable  language :  "  Of  these 
orders  in  Council,  Napoleon  had  no  right  to  complain  ;  but  they 
were  grievously  unjust  to  neutrals;  and  it  is  now  generally  allowed, 
that  they  were  contrary  to  the  law  of  nations,  and  to  our  own  mu- 
nicipal laic  /" 

These  liberal  admissions  have  come  too  late  to  repair  the  ruined 
fortunes,  or  to  heal  the  broken  hearts  of  the  sufferers ;  they  will 
not  recall  to  life  the  thousands  who  fell  on  hard-fought  fields,  in 
defense  of  their  country's  rights.  But  they  do  not  come  too  late 
to  rebuke  the  levity  with  which  it  is  now  intimated,  that  the 
United  States  stand  at  the  august  bar  of  Public  Law,  not  as  reason- 
ing men,  but  as  spoiled  children  ;  not  too  late  to  suggest  the  possi- 
bility to  candid  minds,  that  the  next  generation  may  do  us  the 
like  justice,  with  reference  to  more  recent  controversies.* 

Thus,  fellow-citizens,  I  have  endeavored,  without  vain-glorying 
with  respect  to  ourselves,  or  bitterness  toward  others,  but  in  a 
spirit  of  candor  and  patriotism,  to  repel  the  sinister  intimation  that 
a  fatal  degeneracy  is  stealing  over  the  country  ;  and  to  show  that 
the  eighty-fourth  anniversary  finds  the  United  States  in  the  fulfill- 
ment of  the  glowing  anticipations  with  which,  in  the  self-same  in- 
strument, their  Independence  was  inaugurated,  and  their  Union 
first  proclaimed.  No  formal  act  had  as  yet  bound  them  together  ; 
no  plan  of  confederation  had  even  been  proposed.  A  common  al- 
legiance embraced  them,  as  parts  of  one  metropolitan  empire  ;  but 
when  that  tie  was  sundered  they  became  a  group  of  insulated  and 
feeble  communities,  not  politically  connected  with  each  other  nor 
known  as  yet  in  the  family  of  nations.  Driven  by  a  common  ne- 
cessity, yearning  toward  each  other  with  a  common  sympathy  of 
trial  and  of  danger,  piercing  with  wise  and  patriotic  foresight  into 
the  depths  of  ages  yet  to  come — led  by  a  Divine  counsel — they 
clung  together  with  more  than  elective  affinity,  and  declared  the 
independence  of  the  United  States.  North  and  South,  great  and 
small,  Massachusetts  and  Virginia,  the  oldest  and  then  the  largest ; 
New  York  and  Pennsylvania,  unconscious  as  yet  of  their  destined 
preponderance,  but  already  holding  the  central  balance ;   Rhode 


*  Lord  Campbell's  Lives  of  the  Chancellors,  vol.  vii.,  p.  218 ;  Stor-ifs  Miscel- 
laneous Writings,  p.  2S3 ;  Phillimo.-e's  International  Late,  vol.  iii.,  pp.  250,  589  ; 
Manning'*  Commentary  on  the  Law  of  JVations,  p.  230  ;  Wildman,s  Institutes  of 
International  Law,  vol.  ii.,  pp.  183,  1S5;  also,  the  French  publicists,  Hautefeuillo 
end  Ortolan,  under  the  appropriate  heads. 


SUCCESS  OF  OUR  REPUBLIC.  23 

Island  and  Delaware,  raised  by  the  Union  to  a  political  equality 
with  their  powerful  neighbors,  joined  with  their  sister  republics  in 
the  august  Declaration  for  themselves  and  for  the  rapidly  multi- 
plying family  of  States,  which  they  beheld  in  prophetic  vision. 
This  great  charter  of  independence  was  the  life  of  the  Kevolution, 
the  sword  of  attack,  the  panoply  of  defense.  Under  the  consum- 
mate guidance  of  Washington  it  sustained  our  fathers  under  defeat, 
and  guided  them  to  victory.  It  gave  us  the  alliance  with  France, 
and  her  auxiliary  armies  and  navies.  It  gave  us  the  Confederation 
and  the  Constitution.  With  successive  strides  of  progress  it  has 
crossed  the  Alleghanies,  the  Ohio,  the  Mississippi,  and  the  Missouri ; 
has  stretched  its  living  arms  almost  from  the  Arctic  circle  to  the 
tepid  waters  of  the  Gulf;  has  belted  the  continent  with  rising 
States;  has  unlocked  the  golden  treasures  of  the  Sierra  Madre; 
and  flung  out  the  banners  of  the  Eepublic  to  the  gentle  breezes  of 
the  Peaceful  Sea.  Not  confined  to  the  continent,  the  power  of  the 
Union  has  convoyed  our  commerce  upon  the  broadest  oceans  to 
the  farthest  isles ;  has  opened  the  gates  of  the  Morning  to  our 
friendly  intercourse ;  and— sight  unseen  before  in  human  history — 
has,  from  the  legendary  Cipango,  the  original  object  of  the  expe- 
dition of  Columbus,  brought  their  swarthy  princes,  on  friendly  em- 
bassage, to  the  western  shores  of  the  world-dividing  ocean. 

Meantime,  the  gallant  Frenchmen,  who  fought  the  battles  of 
liberty  on  this  continent,  carried  back  the  generous  contagion  to 
their  own  fair  land.  Would  that  they  could  have  carried  with  it 
the  moderation  and  the  wisdom  that  tempered  our  revolution! 
The  great  idea  of  constitutional  reform  in  England,  a  brighter  jewel 
in  her  crown  than  that  of  which  our  fathers  bereft  it,  i3  coeval  with 
the  successful  issue  of  the  American  struggle.  The  first  appeal  of 
revolutionary  Greece— an  appeal  not  made  in  vain— was  for  Ameri- 
can sympathy  and  aid.  The  golden  vice-royalties  of  Spain  on  this 
continent  asserted  their  independence,  in  imitation  of  our  example, 
though  sadly  deficient  in  previous  training  in  the  school  of  regu- 
lated liberty;  and  now,  at  length,  the  fair  "Niobe  of  Nations,"  ac- 
cepting a  constitutional  monarchy  as  an  installment  of  the  long-de- 
ferred debt  of  freedom,  sighs  through  all  her  liberated  States  for  a 
representative  confederation,  and  claims  the  title  of  the  Italian 
Washington  for  her  heroic  Garibaldi. 

Here  then,  fellow-citizens,  I  close  where  I  began  ;  the  noble  pre- 
diction of  Adams  is  fulfilled.     The  question  decided  eighty-four 


24 


SUCCESS   OF  QUE  REPUBLIC. 


years  ago  in  Philadelphia  was  the  greatest  question  ever  decided  in 
America;  and  the  event  has  shown  that  greater,  perhaps,  never 
was  nor  never  will  be  decided  among  men.  The  great  Declaration, 
with  its  life-giving  principles,  has,  within  that  interval,  exerted  its 
influence,  from  the  central  plains  of  America  to  the  eternal  snows 
of  the  Cordilleras,  from  the  Western  shores  of  the  Atlantic  to  the 
farthest  East,  crossed  the  earth  and  the  ocean,  and  circled  the 
globe.  Nor  let  us  fear  that  its  force  is  exhausted,  for  its  principles 
are  broad  as  humanity— as  eternal  as  truth.  And  if  the  visions 
of  patriotic  seers  are  destined  to  be  fulfilled ;  if  it  is  the  will  of 
Providence  that  the  lands  which  now  sit  in  darkness  shall  see  the 
day  ;  that  the  South  and  East  of  Europe  and  the  West  of  Asia  shall 
be  regenerated ;  and  the  ancient  and  mysterious  regions  of  the  East, 
the  cradle  of  mankind,  shall  receive  back  in  these  latter  days  from 
the  West  the  rich  repayment  of  the  early  debt  of  civilization,  and 
rejoice  in  the  cheerful  light  of  constitutional  freedom,  that  light 
will  go  forth  from  Independence  Hall  in  Philadelphia ;  that  lesson 
of  constitutional  freedom  they  will  learn  from  this  day's  declaration. 


m 


WHBELEB   &   ■WILSON'S 

SEWING  MACHINES, 

The  great  Economizer  of  Time,  and  Preserver  of  Health, 


Have  won  the  Highest  Prem- 
iums at  the  Fair  of  the  United 
States  Agricultural  Society ;  at 
the  State  Fairs  of  Maine,  Ver- 
mont, Connecticut,  New  York, 
New  Jersey,  Pennsylvania,  Vir- 
ginia, Mississippi,  Missouri, 
Ohio,  Indiana,  Illinois.  Kentuc- 
ky, Michigan,  Wisconsin,  Cali- 
fornia, and  at  the  Fairs  of  the 
American  Institute,  New  York; 


Mechanics'  Association,  Boston; 
Franklin  Institute,  Philadel- 
phia; Mechanics'  Institute,  Bal- 
timore ;  Metropolitan  Mechan- 
ics' Institute,  Washington;  Me- 
chanics' Association,  Cincinna- 
ti ;  Kentucky  Institute,  Louis- 
ville ;  Mechanical  Association, 
St.  Louis;  Mechanics'  Institute; 
San  Francisco ;  and  at  hun- 
dreds of  County  Fairs. 


Office,   505   BROADWAY,   N.  Y. 


The  Lock  Stitch  made  by  this  Machine  is  the  only  stitch  that  cannot  be  ravelled,  and  that  presents  the  same 
appearance  each  side  of  the  seam.  It  is  made  with  two  threads,  one  upon  each  side  of  the  fabric,  and  interlocked 
in  the  centre  of  it. 


ECONOMY    OF    SEWING   MACHINES. 

The  Wheeler  &  Wilson  Sewing  Machine  Company  has  prepared  tables  showing  by  actual  experiment  ol 
four  different  workers,  the  time  required  to  stitch  each  part  of  a  garment  by  hand,  and  with  their  Sewing 
Machine.  The  superiority  of  the  work  done  by  the  Machine,  and  the  healthfulness  of  the  employment  are 
advantages  quite  as  great  as  the  saving  of  time.    Subjoined,  is  a  summary  of  several  of  the  tables — 


Gentlemen's  Shirts  -         -    1 

Frock  Coats 2 

Satin  Vests 1 

Linen    " 

Cloth  Pants 

Summer "       -    -    -    -    - 

Silk  Press        1 

Merino  Dress 1 


BY  MACHINE.     BY  HAND. 
Hours.  Min's 
14        26 


Hours.  Min's. 


16 


Calico  Dress 
Chemise 
Moreen  Skirt 
Muslin    " 
Night  Dress 
Drawers      - 
Silk  Apron 
Plafn    "     - 


BY  MACHINE. 
Hours.  Min's. 


BY  HAND. 
Hours.  Min's 


Seams  of  any  considerable  length  ai  e  stitched  ordinarily,  at  the  rate  of  a  yard  a  minute. 


Sewing  Machines  Awards  by  the  American  Institute,  1ST.  Y. 

Sewing  Machines,  considered  in  their  social,  industrial,  physiogical  bearings  upon  society,  are  second  in  impor 
tance  to  no  material  agentof  the  day.  Economizing  nme-tenths  of  the  time  required  for  sewing  by  hand;  eliminat 
ing  most  of  the  evils  of  needlework  ;  enlarging  the  sphere  of  woman's  employment  by  creating  new  and  profitable 
branches  of  industry  ;  relieving  the  housekeeper  of  her  most  grievous  burden,  the  Sewing  Machines  rank  with 
the  fabled  deities  as  benefactors  of  humanity. 

Tne  committee  of  the  American  Institute,  N.  Y. ,  appointed  at  the  late  exebition  at  Palace  Garden,  to 
examine  (Sewing  Machines,  have  made  a  long,  elaborate,  and  able  report,  of  much  interest  to  the  public. 
Although  the  utility  of  the  invention  is  established  beyond  all  question  yet,  for  the  various  purposes  of  its 
application,  ignorance  exists  as  to  the  particular  patent  best  for  a  specific  purpose.  Committees  heretofore 
have  not  discriminated  and  classified  sufficiently.  This  report  is  free  from  these  faults.  The  Machines  are 
arranged  according  to  the  stitch  made,  and  the  purpose  to  which  the  machine  is  to  be  applied,  in  four  classes 
1st,  2d,  2rd  and  4th  ;  a  classification  indicating  the  general  order  of  merit  and  importance  : 

Class  1st,  includes  the  Shuttle  or  Lock  Stitch  Macnines  for  family  use,  and  for  manufacturers  in  the  same 
range  of  purpose  and  material.  The  Commitee  has  assigned  this  class  the  highest  rank,  on  account  of  the 
"elasticity,  permanence,  beautv,  and  general  desirableness  of  the  shtching  when  done,"  and  the  wide  range  of 
application.     At  the  head  of  this  class  tney  piace  the   Wheeler  &  Wilson  Machine,  and  award   it  the    highest 

liura.  This  has  been  the  uniform  reward  for  this  Mac hiue.  throughout  the  Country  for  several  years,  and 
irson  will  dispute  its  justice  au).i  propriety 


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RETURN  TO  Dll^Y  USE 


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